Author Notes: This is a long story broken up into six chapters. It has already been completed, but I'm going to wait for an undetermined amount of time before posting the next chapter(s). I'm doing that because I can.
What you need to know about this story: Playing for Keeps is an AU (alternate universe) that takes place after Kingdom Hearts ends. It's basically what I would have happen if I were told to create KH: Chain of Memories, the next part of the canon saga. References are made to "Enigmatic Man" from KH: Final Mix; if you don't know who that is, go look him up. Characters such as Axel and Vixen have also not been fabricated by me, and other details will become real treats if you're familiar with facts already released about the next game.
The story belongs to me; most of the characters do not; the original premise was the brainchild of my friend Phil, and I bastardized it when I wrote the actual story.
Sora has been stuck on Disney Castle's
planet for a year; he is now a moody teenager who wants to go find his
friends, but can't. One night a strange cloaked figure approaches
him and offers a deal he can't refuse.
¤ ¤ ¤ ¤
PLAYING FOR KEEPS
¤ ¤ ¤ ¤
He felt most comfortable when holding the Keyblade.
It was like an extension of his arms—a vital body part he couldn't be without. When the Key wasn't in his hands, his palms itched and sweat and became grossly clammy. His nerves were suddenly supersensitive and they made every unnecessary touch feel like a blade scraping on his skin, but he endured that valiantly. He sat at fancy dinner parties every night, because every night was fit for a fancy gala in Disney Castle, and he ground and twisted the fancy linen napkin on his lap. He stared into his soup and longed for fresh air. When outdoors he could train for a war against the Heartless that might never come, but at dinner he only battled a mild migraine.
"Sora, dear?"
His soup had been left untouched again—as usual. He had no appetite. He looked at his reflection on the steaming, sickly green soup's surface, and realized without much surprise that his hair was longer and he looked . . . older. He looked much older than the one year that had passed since a time when all he needed to be himself was the Key and a weak prey of Heartless. Carefully he folded and smoothed the linen napkin across his lap and looked up, forcing on a smile. The placid soup created a visual echo of his face and its many premature care lines, which were aggravated by the additional stress of smiling.
"Yeah?"
Donald coughed pointedly from someplace across the table.
Nowadays Sora was too tired to look embarrassed. "Yes, Queen Minnie?"
"Could you please hand me the large blue tureen?"
Ah, Sora thought as he passed the platter to a dignitary, who passed it on to their well-loved queen. They don't even bother to point out my lack of eating now, nor my lack of sleep and conversation. They're quick to point out my other faults, yeah—Sora snuck in a dark look for Donald—but they've finally given up on the important things. I should be relieved that they're not bothering to ask.
. . . But I'm not.
"Why are you so lost in thought, King Sora?" said a duke named Louis, nudging him.
"Sora," he corrected automatically. His conflicted hopes and disappointments shriveled. "Just Sora, please."
"And he's only a king until King Mickey returns!" Donald squawked.
"Donald Duck!"
"Sorry, Daisy . . ."
"King or not, he still has his head in the clouds," Louis said.
Sora grinned despite himself. "Louis, I'm not always like this. I guess I'm just tired right now."
"All the independent training he has been doing lately is trying," the royal trainer said. He was a short, tense man named Alexander who easily beat Sora in hand-to-hand combat the first time they met. "You see, after one year Sora has gone way beyond what I can teach him. Now I'm the one crying for mercy even when he isn't using the Keyblade!"
Just the mention of the Key made Sora twitch and feel bothered. Sweat rolled down the back of his neck. There were rows of windows on each wall of the banquet anteroom, but they could not be opened; cool night air pressed against the stained glass, Sora imagined, while inside it was stifling. His restless hands sought out the linen napkin again.
"Yeah, too much training," Sora said nervously. He became increasingly aware of the press of bodies seated at the long table with him. A duchess several seats down kept picking up and setting down her buttering knife without ever using it. That grated on his patience the most. "But I can't take a break yet."
Anxiety stroked the back of his facade, searching for cracks to seep through. The last time he had felt like this, about to lose his poise, he had ultimately caused a huge scene that involved lots of screaming and Donald later forcing him to write apology notes to the hundred or so dignitaries that had been visiting that night. On most nights he was able to choke down claustrophobia and some of his food, and tonight would've passed just as uneventfully, except for what he had seen this morning when . . .
I didn't see that, he thought viciously.
He was already acquainted with answering himself, so he did: Yes, you saw that.
Pluto dropped his head onto Sora's lap and looked up at him with big, pleading eyes. Although he was usually able to resist the charms of hungry animals, Sora removed his soup dish from the table and placed it between Pluto's front paws. He wasn't going to eat it anyway, and now there was no reflection to look at—just a blinding white tablecloth and rows of uninterrupted silverware that he still didn't know how to use properly.
"I'm going to bed," he said to the tablecloth.
The tablecloth did not reply. No one replied. When he left, no one looked up to see him go. Meanwhile, his untouched spoons and forks and knives glinted forlornly.
I didn't see that, he thought again. I was going to the kitchen this morning, and I took the shorter route through the east wing. I passed the royal repository, which is always locked—but it was open for once. I was curious—who could blame me?—so I looked in, and I saw . . .
Nothing?
He scaled the grand spiral staircase that went from the first floor to the second; its eastern side lied juxtaposed with a wall of paintings, each a portrait of some famous person in the Kingdom. His own portrait was on the thirty-first step (when his painting was hung, he had been enthusiastic enough to count the steps) and he paused to look at it. He was featured alone, posing in the seat of a mock throne that had been set up. He was wearing a shiny brass crown that he had afterwards dumped into his closet with a collection of stained sweat socks and fraying headbands. The learned manners that held his shoulders very straight against the throne had since been forgotten. In Mickey's absence he was made King, although this was honorary and meant only to appease the Kingdom's citizens who couldn't live without a national figurehead.
Yeah. I saw nothing.
He touched his painted smile gingerly and remembered the hard, uncompromising seat and the heavy, awkward position of the shiny brass crown. Past joys ached throughout his body.
He saw nothing in the repository because what he did see made no sense! Why would they—the Royal Advisory and Adjudicatory Court, or simply the Court—keep something so important from him?
How did those letters addressed to him—Don't acknowledge something exists when it doesn't!—those things—whatever they were—get to the Magic Kingdom if all of the worlds had been separated for over a year?
I'm so confused.
That's all right. Isn't everybody?
He had never seen the repository open before and his curiosity, once smothered by apathy, had glowed again like fanned embers. No one had been around, so sneaking up to the door and peering inside and seeing what required so many harmless secrets was . . . (Sora fumbled for the correct word here as he traced the edges of his portrait-self's perfect posture) . . . justified. He was King: anyone who confronted him about his taking a look-see would have to get over it.
So he had sneaked up to the door and peered inside and seen what required so many harmless secrets. There were shelves stacked with cardboard boxes, and these boxes were clearly labeled by permanent marker: QUEEN'S JEWELS, ROYAL DECLARATIONS, SILK SHEETS, GOLD CUTLERY, LETTERS TO SORA, . . . The gears turning in his head had then ground to a stop and color drained out of everything. He had never seen those letters—the Court had claimed no letters had ever come for him from his friends or Mickey—and this proved that his sixth sense had been right all along. Footsteps had then come from the left and he ran away from them. In the kitchen he had stolen an apple as a small meal before training; he had walked outside, taken one bite, and promptly thrown up in the grass. After that he had beaten the shit out of Alexander to work off his angry confusion. By lunchtime his stomach had been no more than a burning, cramped muscle.
Now it was evening, after dinner on that very same day, and the base of Sora's spine was throbbing hotly enough to drag him from the memory of Alexander frantically pleading for mercy. He could hear the celebration of voices and orchestral music from the anteroom, but the higher he climbed on the staircase, the less distinct these sounds became until they blended together into a solid murmuration.
His room was in the middle of a maze of hallways; while it wasn't the royal suite, his room had been reserved for dignitaries in the past, and so was elegant and accommodating. He stepped inside and shut the door. No noises from downstairs reached him in here, tucked away in a wing reserved for people staying in the castle. Still, he paused, straining to hear even one sign of life through the many walls separating him from everyone else. The window was open and it was chilly in his room, but he paid no notice since the rest of the castle was a furnace. The lights were off and he didn't bother to turn them on as he stepped up to his bureau's mirror. In the darkness his image was a plain shadow: a spiky-topped moppet with ungainly arms and legs that was vaguely intimidating. He was neither Sora, nor King, nor the Keyblade Master when he was a shadow in the mirror. He was a poor imitation of Anti-Sora, if anything at all.
What am I thinking?
He sloughed his day-clothes like a snake does dead skin. That morning he had laid out a pair of dark shorts and a jumper, though he had done so halfheartedly, unhappily unsure of his plans for nighttime. The clothes were inky and soft in his hands; he shrugged on the jumper and belted the shorts tightly, roughly. He scolded himself for his fascination with the color black, with shadows. Really, what good became of darkness?
Completeness.
A shining grid of sapphire blue energy lurked behind his eyelids. It was part of a memory.
. . . I'll pretend I didn't just think that.
There was no one in his wing of the castle—they were all still having a ball—but he didn't risk trooping past the anteroom dressed as he was. He pulled the jumper's hood over his head, assuming some anonymity; he buried his hands inside deep pockets and uneasily fiddled with a piece of lint. There were no rules against doing something like sneaking out at this hour, but it was suspicious nonetheless, and if anyone found out . . . well. He used the servants' back stairwells to avoid anyone who had also decided to turn in early.
The kitchen was still bustling with activity when he got there. Meals were continually being sent back and forth as per requests of the guests, and unlike chefs in some commoner restaurants, the royal chefs took no offense: they prepared the meals again, taking extra consciousness with the paprika or lemon juice or whatever, and pushed the servers back out good-naturedly. Sora went unnoticed as he tiptoed around the perimeter of the room; only as an afterthought did he nab an unopened jar of peanut butter by the door to the outside trash receptacle area.
"The Honorable Emanuel says his filet mignon isn't rare enough," a bow-tied penguin with a serving tray told one chef.
"Apologize for me at once and tell him I'll serve it raw if I must!"
The door swung shut. Sora used his fingers to eat the peanut butter while he walked into a nighttime darkness punctuated by the waning moon and a few fistfuls of stars. The castle grounds were not unknown to him, even during these unwinding hours. He struggled with the extraordinarily thick peanut butter as his bare legs shushed through the long stalks of grass; uncaringly, he discarded the jar when emptied sometime later and wandered around on the paths, at times straying off to make his own. His movements were without purpose; he wandered and tried not to think too much. A curl of flattened grass rolled out behind him.
When he first noticed it, he dismissed it as the wind. The air was cold: summer was quickly approaching fall, though fall had a tendency to be more like winter around here. Night's chilly winds were not enough to arouse chattering teeth, but at least enough to warrant long sleeves. The rustling grass spoke in its own language. So yes, he dismissed it as the wind until the wind failed and it continued undeterred.
It was speaking. Dear Sora, it said, and Sora knew it wasn't the wind now.
He stopped walking. The visible clouds—thin cirri tendrils braided together to resemble a spider's web—bent and twisted to form a net that caught up the moon, which sparkled and gleamed eerily behind the meshing like a half-hidden clutch of diamonds. A kaleidoscope of moonlight patterned the countryside, drizzling molten silver onto everything. Though belatedly, Sora realized he was standing at a crossroads, and that meant he was a remarkable distance from the castle. He could not remember intending to stray so far from the shimmery architect's dream behind him. More importantly there was whatever it was—it defied description—but he looked down the path that went east and saw only rolling hills basking under the false sun.
Dear Sora, it said again.
"Who's there?" he replied. His voice was surprisingly level while dread enveloped his spine like a cachet. "Who said that?"
The soundless voice swelled and subsided; it rustled his hair with cool breaths he couldn't truly feel. All around him the world was submerged in lacy bands of filtered moonlight that rippled, giving him the impression of being underwater. He resisted his first impulse to draw the Key, though his skin was dank and crawling with want. Dear Sora, it said for the third time . . . I hope—
"Heartless!" Sora searched the shadows for more animate, goggle-eyed counterparts, but the paths bore none. Aside from the long grass, there was nowhere those creatures could have hidden. The lust for battle—for action—blossomed in his heart: his feet spread and he brought up his hands, inches apart and parallel, ready to attack at even the slightest provocation. "Heartless, show yourselves!"
Dear Sora, I hope you listened to me when I asked you to look after her. Otherwise I won't know how to forgive you. Sora barely fought down a shudder. The chill outside wasn't enough to match the one crystallizing in his bowels. Slivers of ice emptied into his veins; unpleasant gooseflesh spread over his body. Dear Sora . . .
Paper crinkled behind him and he immediately determined its distance to be no more than five yards away, down the western path. Turning around was a quick, fearless maneuver; he summoned the Key and aimed it, ready to cast magic if need be. There was someone standing there, discernable only by the stars it blotted out with its own darkness, but Sora was appreciative that the presence with its voiceless voice was no longer so intangible.
"Who's there?" Sora demanded.
"I'm not done yet," said a low voice, a real voice, accompanied by the rustle of paper. "So I hope Kairi is with you. That's the least you can do for an old friend."
Sora's fingers tightened and the Key's leather handgrip creaked. He didn't recognize the voice; however, the passage of déjà vu and moonlight aided to partial identification of this mysterious person. There was no mistaking the cloak it wore. Sora followed the garment's dark outline; when its specific details became apparent, he studied its zippers and snaps, and then the drawn hood's beaded tassels. He remembered the insane pas de deux in Hollow Bastion with a cloaked enigmatic man: the dazzling blue energy, the cryptic messages, the ghostlike coming and going, the crush of unrelated memories, the power neither light nor dark but something in-between . . .
"It's you," Sora said simply. "I remember you—"
"You remember a comrade," the shadow murmured, "rather than me."
"'A mere shell' . . . What are you, then?"
"I'm a postman." Two gloved hands waved what the shadow had been reading from: a creased manila sheet that wore its age badly with tears and stains. "Or were you not listening to the whole 'Dear Sora' spiel, Keyblade Master?"
Sora blinked. "That's a letter."
"Perceptive."
"That's my letter."
"I believe so, yes."
"Give it to me," he whispered.
He charged at the shadow with the Key held high like a talisman. The shadow's countermove came and went before Sora could react; the ground went out from under his feet and he twice tumbled head over heels off of the path and into the tall grass. He struggled to sit up, but the shadow's boot pressed into his sternum and forced him back down firmly and remorselessly.
"Enjoy the view from down there for a bit longer, all right?" the shadow said and revealed the barest hint of a toothy smile inside its unnaturally dark hood—this presence seemed human, true, but Sora did not feel comforted knowing that. "I haven't finished perusing your precious letter aloud yet."
Distantly, Sora knew that he ought to control his temper. His patience possessed a fuse that had once been reasonably sound, but over the last twelve months it had been pared down to its currently awful shortness. It didn't take much to make it burn. He fought to detach himself from the mounting anger—but he fought too late. Rage ate through him like acid, obliterating his weak self-restraint.
When he shut his eyes, he saw all that had maddened him lately: the Kingdom's citizens bowing before their false king, the dinner parties where he broiled in his own perspiration and fate, the training sessions that he used to channel all of his frustration into sheer power, Goofy's dim indifference, Donald's narrow-mindedness, Mickey for not being there, the Court for keeping his letters from him—actual letters, one of which the shadow flaunted like a matador's cape—the royal repository for being open that one time and himself for looking inside, Ansem for stealing away Riku and Kairi and the Destiny Islands, darkness' promises for corrupted hearts, the Keyblade for choosing him, the cloaked shadow for toying with his wishes, and . . . and . . .
Before the memories and emotions could pour out of him as tears, he instead forced all that he felt into a thundering malevolence that threatened to destroy everything around him. The shadow was unfurling the letter again when Sora's hand curled around one of its ankles. His startlingly tight hold gave one fierce jerk and the shadow went headfirst into the deeper grass.
Sora got up and trained the Key on the shadow's face. Adrenaline gushed through him, pulling every muscle taunt, and his breaths moved in and out audibly. The Key's austere metal tines teased the shadow's hood, but did not push it back; however, a slim ringlet of auburn hair fell into the half-light, dissolving more mystery with another component of humanity exposed.
"Enjoy the view," Sora hissed.
The shadow didn't reply and Sora had the unsettling feeling that he was being dissected by those hidden eyes.
"Give me my letter, Postman."
Without reluctance—which Sora understood soon enough—the shadow proffered the desired letter with a flourish of its wrist, calm and collected despite staring up the arm of the potentially-harmful Key. Sora snatched the letter and held it to his heart with one hand, hesitating on where to proceed from there.
"Go on. I never got a chance to finish," the shadow said, smiling. "Read it aloud."
"Yeah . . ." Sora mumbled.
He kept one eye on the shadow as he stepped back and balanced the Key on the crook of his neck. The letter felt real enough as he turned it over in his hands, fretting the edges lightly to avoid paper cuts. Although he knew the letter (and presumably, letters) did exist, he now balked with the shadow's suggestion. Letters were private, personal, and intimate things that should not have been read in the first place by this postman. He glared at the shadow and then spread the letter open, skimming the contents silently. The words were written in a familiar, queerly-hurried handwriting, and he knew immediately this letter had been penned by Riku, whose arrogantly fancy signature at the bottom was a comforting sight.
"Good," Sora said, relieved. "So how did you get this?"
"Get what?" the shadow asked, suddenly confused.
Sora looked over the top of the letter and said, "This letter. How'd you get it out of the royal repository?"
"Oh—the letter. It's real?"
"What do you mean?"
It was then that Sora noticed the letter twitching in his hand like a butterfly caught by its wings. The slanted handwriting withered and bleached along with the paper's original manila coloration, as if it were film exposed to sunlight, and Riku's thick signature was the last to vanish.
In his hands now was a blank sheet, its new color not unlike wet granite. It was a paper that boasted no more worth to him than a kingdom's throne. His hands loosened unconsciously and the paper fluttered away into the tall grass.
"I would never give you the real letters so easily," the shadow said. It was standing; Sora couldn't remember it getting up, but he hadn't been watching ever since the letter began deteriorating. "The real letters are too valuable."
Unthinking now, Sora didn't bother to suppress his anger. The Key spun into his hands, tines skyward, and he heard himself screaming "GIVE THEM TO ME!" at the shadow. The early autumnal chill betrayed him: he felt very hot, so he broke out into an unhelpful sweat. His vision went fuzzy and dark; he thought he might faint. He held up the Key and willed a robust fireball into existence, using magic that fed directly off of his emotions. It burnt a path toward the shadow, incinerating anything in its way.
The shadow did not evade. Instead, it situated one arm across its body at a 45-degree slant; without an indicative ring of power or stirring of air, it was suddenly and completely protected from the magical fire. The oncoming flames smashed against the invisible barrier and curved around it, thereby revealing a spherical proximity immune the fire magic. Sora was inclined to believe in the barrier's immunity to all other magic as well, and his instincts informed him that attacking the barrier physically would be like attacking a brick wall. Nonetheless, he charged at the shadow, his brash smile implying that he was about to destroy a weak Heartless.
A resounding racket—CLANG!—met his efforts. (And had he not been wearing bracers ever since a lesson long ago in wrist vulnerability by Alexander the trainer, he would have also met ruined wrists.) He recovered and persisted: Clang! Clang! Clang! His frenzied slashing did not cause the barrier to ebb; in the midst of his anger he knew the shadow was smiling.
"Give me my letters!" he screamed. "Give them to me, or I'll rip you in half when I get through this fucking barrier—you know I will! I'm not going to stand any more games from you or anyone else! I WANT MY LETTERS!"
Unfettered fury gave Sora the momentum he needed to begin overpowering the barrier. His opponent's arm quickly slanted down, and the barrier swelled noticeably when the Key hit it sooner and recoiled farther than before. The increase in power had been marginal, but it was one that made Sora's strength less potent for now.
He stepped back to catch his breath, and the shadow spoke sotto voce: ". . . I'd give you the letters because they're not mine, but like I said: they're valuable. I deserve remuneration for rescuing them from the Court's clutches, don't I? They sacrificed guards to protect the repository—the floor was red with their sacrifice—all because they knew what would happen if you found out about the letters. Your anger would fester unpredictably until you'd be willing to murder for the truth!
"You are their anchor, their pro tempore King Sora, and they can't have you going off the deep end so soon. Maybe after Mickey returned they would have let you know, but not now. Their plans spoiled in a moment of oversight when the repository door was left ajar and you looked in—and, also, when I decided to take action. Especially when I decided to take action. They hadn't counted on my intrusion into their dirty room of secrets."
CLANG!
"Now that's just not nice, Sora."
"Give me my letters, asshole. I don't know who you are, where you came from, or how you know about my letters; all I know is that you have them, and I want them back right now."
The shadow shook its head solemnly. "No wonder everyone avoids you. You've forgotten all your manners. You've even forgotten how to say 'please'! Even I can do that."
Sora paced around the barrier, tapping his Key against its surface to test for weaknesses. "Please," he grated out from between clenched teeth. The word oozed with mocking deceit. "Please give the letters back to me. Please give them back now, asshole!"
"Do you listen? Are you deaf? Aren't you willing to—mm, I don't know—hear the mysterious stranger no matter how nefarious appearances are? Particularly when I'm offering you something otherwise unattainable. Particularly when I'm offering you these dear letters that I could easily shred into fucking pieces and burn away if you don't show me some fucking respect." Real danger came into the shadow's voice without preamble. Its cracked emerald eyes opened wide, catching the moonlight that accentuated derangement. "Show me some respect, Sora, and maybe we can make a deal so you can be well on your way to getting your letters back."
"Fine. Whatever." Sora shakily pushed his fingers through his hair, averting his eyes from the crazed pair. "You have my letters. I want my letters. That's simple. Name your price, Postman."
The shadow's venom thinned, returning its eyes to darkness and its voice to a smooth, conciliating state. "Well now—what do you take me for?" it asked and relaxed its stance. "A common crook? Oh no, dear Sora . . . I couldn't take your money, or even that delightful little weapon you're holding. That'd just be too much. What I want is you to hear me out for a while longer."
There was something unnerving and mystical about the shadow that reminded Sora of the Cheshire Cat: an all-knowing, ambivalent, powerful creature who had haunted him in Wonderland and who later gifted him with ice-based magic. Presently Sora was haunted by thoughts he would have gladly undone: if the shadow's demands had been different, would Sora be willing to part with the Key in exchange for the letters? (The possibility of denouncing his title as Keyblade Master scared him, because it took a few seconds too long to think Of course not.)
"Then talk," Sora muttered. The first seedlings of doubt had already been sowed in his mind. "Get it over with."
"You're worthless here."
"Wow! You came all of the way here to toy with me, just to say something like 'You're worthless here'? Don't you think I already know that?" he snapped, voice breaking. "I hope that's all you wanted to say. My letters, if you please."
"There are places where you wouldn't be worthless," the shadow continued. "You've reached your peak here, practicing old techniques and unable to find someone to learn new ones from. No one in this world can teach you anything you don't already know. Other environments could—well—nurtureyou rather than smother. You could be so powerful. You can't get off this glittery orbiting heap because the Court claims every world is still divided . . . and yet I can come and go at will. That must mean . . ."
"I'll find a way to get out of here!" Sora shouted. "My letters, if you please?"
The shadow paused. "Do you really believe that, Sora?"
"The worlds can't stay disconnected forever," he protested, though he wavered with doubtfulness he hoped the shadow overlooked.
I can say all that until I turn blue in the face, but the arrival of this cloaked person—a 'comrade' to the guy from Hollow Bastion—might prove that after a year, the worlds are . . .
He was Sora the Keyblade Master. He could shake off those thoughts, those memories, couldn't he? But all he could think about was the blue lightning crackling in his mind's eye, and the unease lodged in his stomach that he had never totally digested after "the shell" passed through him. The shadow's comrade had been impalpable one second and ravaging the next . . . if this shadow was here all the way from Hollow Bastion, the worlds must have bridged like before . . .
"I'll get out of here one day!" Sora said, desperately holding onto his convictions. "I'll go see my friends and everything'll be back to the way it was supposed to have been from the beginning."
"How can anything ever be like it was before?" the shadow asked, genuinely curious, acting as though Sora were five years old and explaining what pie-in-the-sky profession he aspired to be when he grew up. Its smile was visible again as a pale smudge against the darkness; the corners of his lips wound away like crimping keys on tuna cans. "Don't be an idiot . . ."
"I'm going to be at home with the others, and that'll make everything okay! I'll be back on Destiny Islands, eating paopu fruit with Kairi and getting picked on by Riku! There won't be any of this crap with a war against the Heartless—I won't sit around being bored and I won't train with inferiors who think they can still teach me something."
"You never locked Destiny Islands' keyhole."
Sora's heart lodged in his throat. ". . . I didn't."
"Time isn't on your side, you know."
"Riku can take care of himself and Kairi," he whispered. "He's stronger than me."
"Too bad you can't be sure he's even there right now."
"You can't be sure either!"
"I can't?" the shadow said, smiling wider.
"You—"
The longer you wait for the worlds to conjoin at the hip unequivocally so the Court is forced to admit it, the longer you have to watch the stars and wonder when your home will blip out of existence again like a passing dream. Heartless don't like to fuck around anymore. They won't be waiting for you this time; they don't care about stealing your heart as much as they do torturing it."
Sora felt helpless. He hated feeling helpless. He thought of Kairi, and Riku, and Wakka and Tidus and Selphie and his mother—their memories curled around his neck like a noose, and then he was choking. He was on his knees without knowing how he got there; he was scratching at the immaterial garotte, trying to remove it. The shadow approached him and he could sense that the barrier had lapsed. He knew his chance to run or attack was right now, but he was too tired, and the noose of impuissance only tightened until he could barely breathe.
"I can help you," the shadow said, "though not without some strings attached."
Sora shuddered when the shadow's fingertips touched his hair. "I—"
"Hmm, don't speak until I'm done explaining," the shadow ordered gently, and Sora felt the noose freeing him. "So, I challenge you to a game of cards."
"Cards?" Sora mumbled, rubbing his neck.
"It'll be a game of my own design. The rules are very simple. If you win, I'll give you the letters. In fact, I'll show you how to get back to your friends—how to get back home with them. Power will be yours for the taking."
"And if you win?"
"Then the stakes become mine," the shadow said.
Sora looked up. "What are the stakes?"
"Why—your memories, of course."